User blog:Cheetah-shooter/Cuphead Master Mode
Introduction Expert mode is crazy, some bosses like Hilda Berg became insanely difficult, but some still feel a bit lacking as they are easier by default or Expert mode didn't made the promise of hard enough to be another difficulty, Master mode will be the near impossible difficult while still trying to be fair in some sense. A lot of the element for this mode will revolve around unused content from the game, I will thank Nervatel and Ayy Lmao here for discovering so many stuff never have seen by normal means before. An added rule to encourage people to parry is most of the pink stuff will do something special if left alone, being shot at or just passively being a bit more annoying, so this will make the parry more than a special meter gaining mechanic or a maneuver. This is just a thought experiment, a what-if scenario for the bosses to become even more complex, not a real mod I am developing. I am putting this disclaimer here because I disappointed a friend from Cuphead speedrun Discord (shoutout to Coolguy123), and to not making more people falsely hoping I am actually making this. I hope at least this would be a nice read and also make you wonder what crazier version of these bosses can be with more tricks up their sleeves. The Root Pack Total HP = 2970 The Root Pack is famous for being the easiest as it is on of the first bosses introduced to the players in the game. It wasn't mean to be difficult at the first place, but how do we bump up the difficulty? Sal Spudder HP = 754 Ah the giant angry potato, probably the first main boss you fight to get used to jumping and understanding EVERY pink object must be parried or at least more dangerous. This time, he won't shoot 3 dirt balls and a pink worn each time, he will shoot non stop at random interval. The speed of the projectiles is the same as Expert as it is very fast already. The worm is shot randomly after 3 to 7 dirt balls. For the first instance of pink power, if you didn't parry it and let it leave the screen, it bounces up and fall back to where the players are, good luck dodging the worm falling down and the random interval of the dirtball storm. Ollie Bulb HP = 695 The cute crying onion we all loved, he starts pushing the layer ground exactly when Sal is defeated, leave you no time to rest. When he comes out, he doesn't look around and starts crying immediately. He stops crying for only a brief amount of time only. The tear have two patterns: *It will come down in a roll and only one in each side is pink, the players have to parry to get over each wave. The tears fall down at the speed of Regular for people to react. *It will be a big storm of random tears without pink tears to maneuver. They fall at the speed of Expert. Radish Ollie's minion, he jumps out from the ground when Ollie is defeated(I know, this is just how he programmed to act in Nervatel's YouTube video (especially now he is officially in the game and just like the actual codes, he only appears if you don't attack Ollie), but this is a made-up difficulty, so it doesn't matter), it will start to spin and chase the player or stop spinning and jumps around instead so the player must walk under him instead, he will pair up with the bosses followed by Ollie and can't be defeated until Chauncey is knocked out and he will be too. Betty Beet HP = 732 The unused sassy female of this pack, when Ollie is defeated, she starts pushing the layer ground immediately, she randomly grabs her three babies and attack in three ways: *The middle one will be thrown into her spinning leaves and cut into four slices, they will fall down and the slice with leaves will fall down slower because the leaves act like a propeller. *The front one will be thrown at the players directly and starts rolling at a great speed when it touches the ground. *The back one will be thrown at the ground at a steeper angle and bounces through the battlefield. When she is defeated, she will squeeze her baby like a stress ball and falling back into the earth. Note: This is the version with colour because the style fits the other members more. Chauncey Chantenay HP = 789 Lastly, the crazy psychic leader, a show off, also waste no time to pop out of the ground. *His homing carrot comes out continuously at small quantity no matter what he do, and way more will come out when he massages his forehead. HP = 8 **Pink carrots appears, they go straight down and hit the ground, instead of disappearing they stick in the ground as a trap, lose the pink colour and take more damage to destroy. HP = 36 *Psychic beam attack now aims the player for each individual ring, which makes it covers a bigger area. Goopy Le Grande HP = 3132 Well, another really easy boss that design to teach you ducking and dashing. Like The Root Pack, he is one of the first boss served as a tutorial, how can we make it difficult? Phase 1 (Normal) HP = 504 Goopy have three bounce heights so it is more unpredictable, and each bounce is have a lesser delay than Expert to make it even smoother. His headbutt starts immediately when he lands and the wind up will take a very short time. If he bounces in order from low, mid and high (like a triple jump in Mario games) his high bounce will be higher, at the peek of that bounce he will slam down and create a slime shock wave like the cupcake but it splash to the end of the screen. After the slam he start bouncing with no delay. Phase 2 (Big) HP = 616 After eating the pill, if the question marks wasn't parried, they fall down and start bouncing to move across the floor, they doesn't bounce high and stay pink, as this phase will be to hard with them never disappearing and this are still the only parry opportunity. Big Goopy still bounces with three heights, with the highest bouncing off the ceiling making him fall down quicker. Only the triple bounce like phase 1 create a bigger slime wave. The punch has the same principle as the headbutt in phase 1. Phase 3 (Pool Ball Bounce) HP = 392 After taking some damage, it plays his deleted part of his animation where he is knocked back, but returns back to normal with the punch smirk. Big Goopy starts spinning and bounces up in a random direction. He travels at a straight line and bounce off the side of the screen and reflected out of a different angle. After depleting his health, he would fall straight down and being dizzy like his normal phase transition. Phase 4 (Tombstone) HP = 756 The tombstone falls on Big Goopy and two small Goopies spawns and run across the floor, they respawn every 2.6 seconds. HP = 10 For the tomb, it moves around rather quickly. When he telegraph his crush, his eyes might look to the left or right, tilt in that direction then crush down. Sometimes, he doesn't and crushes immediately like normal. Sometimes, he can pull back but starts moving again by closing his eyes. And he can start crushing again at quite a quick rate, not always when you are under him but he can do things like pull back but close his eyes, you dash into the same direction he will continue moving and able to get you there. This forces players to acknowledge the telegraph of the fake outs which is heavily implemented in this phase. Phase 5 (Double Goopy) HP = 864 The split tombstone disintegrated to small pieces and disappear, the two small Goopies is shocked and eat another pill, each grows and have a pink question mark on their head which still acts like the ones before, two normal sized Goopies will continue the fight. They only attack with punches and the three height jumps with no slime wave to make it less chaotic. This might even force the players to duck dashing, combining what this boss supposed to teach. This is the last phase of Goopy Le Grande and a homage of what Goopy used to be in a trailer. When the Goopies is knocked out, they will melt a bit and have cross eyes and sick their tongue out. Ribby and Croaks HP = 3320 The fighting amphibians, the fighting game reference density at its max, they certainly feels complete for a Isle 1 boss. They still have something up their sleeves and why not bring them up? Phase 1 (Grouped) HP = 864 Ribby throws punches at random so it doesn't have a pattern(still at the same three heights), pink punches will travel faster or slower to mess up the rhythm. Croaks spits out two or three fire-flies instead of one or two, pink fire-flies spawn, when shot at it left a fiery blood on the ground for a while, lasting 3 seconds. HP = 9 Phase 2 (Pincer attack) HP = 996 Ribby has the same delay as Expert for the roll. Croaks can also roll across while bouncing, so Croaks may be on the left and Ribby on the right. Ribby will mix up his clap and punches and never stop, Croaks fan have a small burst that can activate anytime and it will push slightly stronger for a short while. He still can spit out fire-flies while standing or fanning. They continue until the health is depleted, and stop immediately unlike other mode which they wait for the attack animation to finish. Phase 3 (Slot machine) HP = 1460 Ribby starts rolling immediately again, going left if Croaks rolled first. The coin attack rate is even faster then Expert for one player: at Expert rate but spitting two at once aiming at both player individually for two players. Snake chips roll around and only available to stand on when it is flat on ground. Bull chips may be nearly at the top of the screen so you need to jump on the first one at the middle to jump over the second, even higher one. Tiger chips can shoot the ball low and fall back faster so the players may got trick on walking through a low ball. There is a new set, devil chips, it fires a pink fire constantly, and players have to parry over it, may pair up with the high bull chip so you have to dash after parry up. All four types will be mixed up in a single roll and takes longer before stopping. They will spawn some punches when the chip display shines blue/pink to attack at that height; the fire-flies spawn from the hatch for some homing minions, pink ones that died on platforms will move across on top of it. Hilda Berg HP = 5655 The blimp lady, she is quite interesting as her difficulty increase in Expert mode is a lot more than most of the bosses in the game, may be the highest one yet, how do we make her even harder now? Blimp 1 HP = 225 The same as Expert, only change is Hilda moves around faster. The pink bullets from the purple toy blimp is faster. One or two purple toy blimps spawns. HP = 14 Constellation Taurus HP = 675 Taurus can extend at an angle slightly above or below, which makes it more unpredictable. When this phase ends, a nose ring spawns and slowly chases the player. Blimp 2 HP = 487.5 She gained her aiming tornado attack, crossing the screen at a higher speed and green toy blimps spawn as well, two burst of three in an alternating pattern to force the players to move more. Now purple one to three toy blimps spawns. Note that green toy blimps is spawn one at a time and independent from the blimp count, which is for purple only. Constellation Gemini HP = 720 Gemini's star attack the same as Expert, the star itself now has a hitbox, so the players have to dodge at the right place. When this phase ends, one star stays at the top or bottom left corner that shoots a straight beam at the player, but it has a slow fire rate and telegraph clearly when it will shoot. Blimp 3 HP = 487.5 Her HAs now has a sine wave pattern like a sound wave, and orange toy blimps now spawns, they fire one bullet three times and each aims at the player current position, and alternate between the players if there are two. Two to three purple toy blimps spawns. Orange toy blimps has the same rules as green ones, independent from the purple blimp limit. Constellation Sagittarius HP = 765 Sagittarius shoot out arrows more often, five homing blue stars is released instead of three. HP = 10 When this phase ends, the other corner will be occupied by an arrowhead that spawn those homing blue stars every few seconds. Blimp 4 HP = 540 This fight is already too crazy and the only change is two to four purple toy blimps spawns. Phase 2 (Half moon) HP = 1755 The ring, star and arrowhead dissipated, the half moon Hilda has more stars flying across the screen and pink ones moves in the spiral orbit, the saucer's laser are actually tractor beam and suck up bullets instead of blocking them, but they will break and the scraps rain down and able to damage players, it takes eight bullets to destroy they saucer(HP = 32), a scrap gear is pink. Cagney Carnation HP = 3500 Cagney is slightly underwhelming in term of difficulty of his Expert mode, still chaotic but his completely ditch one of his most annoying attack after the first sub-phase. Thinking of an extra phase for him made my head ache, so I simply add his intro's animation in his actual battle, meming about Undertale at the same time. Phase 1-1 (Passive) HP = 300 Cagney shoot a pollen at the players rapidly, all pollen will have the fuzzy effect. Phase 1-2 HP = 450 Cagney shows his frown, and attack with a circle of pollen surrounding the players, one part of the circle is missing for the players to get out like Hopus Pocus. Phase 2-1 (Aggressive) HP = 350 Cagney now starts his normal phase 1 yelling at the player, starting by setting up the stage. This time all attack will stay and randomly chosen after each sub-phase. Each time there will be 5 blue seeds(with green homing toothy terror HP = 14), 3 purple seeds(black toothy terror that stays on ground HP = 30) and 1 pink seeds(orange flying toothy terror, shoot pink bullet at players, max 2. Blue flying toothy terror (just blue, no face and "OH!" because that is creep), shoot pink seeds at Cagney to heal him for 20, can still damage the players, max 1. Orange and blue can exist together with 3 flowers flying around HP = 25) Phase 2-2 HP = 485 Cagney adds the lunges to his arsenal, and have the glitched telegraph of version 1.1.3 and stay at that position shorter to be less vulnerable and take other action faster, and he can chain up with more lunges in different position. Phase 2-3 HP = 880 Cagney adds the magic hands to his arsenal, shooting 7 acorns, 2 sycamore seeds(random which will attack first, the top on travel at the top of the screen to the top of the floating platform, the lower is the usual one in lower difficulty) and 5 cloud bombs(stick to any surface of the battlefield and explode after a while). Phase 3 (Grown) HP = 1035 Cagney grows and cover the stage with his vines, he still shoots pollen(pink ones make dizzy effect last longer) and thrust the platform with his vines. The vines below may randomly grow toothy terrors like the seed does, green homing ones everywhere, black grounded on the flying platform and the flying flowers to shoot at players or heal Cagney. Here is the next Isle before this page gets too long: Inkwell Isle Two Category:Blog posts